


Indian Summer

by Joodiff



Category: Waking the Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Romance, Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:29:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5391092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joodiff/pseuds/Joodiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Waterloo". What can retirement and their autumn years offer Boyd and Grace?</p><p>
  <i>Adult themes/content - don't like, don't read.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indian Summer

**DISCLAIMER:** I own nothing.

* * *

**Indian Summer**

by Joodiff

* * *

 

There’s a smear of paint on his cheekbone. A soft creamy apricot, the colour she spent far too long selecting for their bedroom. He shook his head, exasperation growing with every minute, every change of heart, but somehow managed not to lose his temper – not as she deliberated at home, nor as she vacillated in the shop. It makes him look a little raffish, that accidental daub of emulsion; in some ridiculous way complements the tousled silver hair, the old grey tee-shirt, the worn, faded jeans that still fit in all the right places.

She has a beer for him, the good stuff, cold from the fridge. Not because she has suddenly fallen into the role of dutiful housewife – _as if!_ – but because the renovation and redecoration of the shabby Highgate house that’s slowly but surely becoming a very comfortable home is very much a joint endeavour. She has the ideas, the flashes of inspiration, and he grumbles and complains and turns her brief notes and rough sketches into practical three-dimensional reality. Teamwork. Complementary, just like the hair and the tee-shirt and the jeans.

She admires his handiwork aloud as he takes the bottle from her with a grateful smile. The wide, traditionally-styled bed they chose together sits in the very centre of the room for now, an island completely shrouded in paint-spattered dust sheets. It will be another day or two before he decrees they can occupy it again, she knows, because despite his innate lack of patience he is a perfectionist with a sharp eye for detail, and he won’t declare the room habitable until every single job on his extensive refurbishment list is done to his absolute satisfaction. But at least by then the smell of fresh paint won’t be quite so overpowering.

She watches the rapid movement of his Adam’s apple as he drinks, heavy swallow after heavy swallow. Late summer in London, with the sun streaming in through the newly restored casement windows, there’s no doubt that decorating’s hot, thirsty work. She tries to wipe the rogue smear of paint from his skin with the ball of her thumb, but it’s long-since dried into a bold warrior’s stripe, and it resists her ineffectual attempts. His eyes are an inquisitive hazel in the bright sunlight, all the darker tones stripped away, but she focuses on his mouth, an uncompromising straight line, perfectly drawn, easily sullen, often amused. She kisses him on a whim, a tempting, hot-eyed summer kiss. He is paint and sweat and stubble and beer, his tee-shirt damp under her palms.

It’s twenty years ago, or maybe it’s now. She doesn’t know or care. In the last six months he’s managed to thieve back more of her youth for her than she could ever have imagined. Reached out and plucked the years straight from Time’s grasp a handful at a time whenever he moved sweet and strong inside her. _Age is irrelevant, you’re whoever and whatever you want to be,_ he’d whispered in her ear the first and only time she’d cried for what could have been long ago if so many things had been different, her tears leaving wet streaks on his bare skin, and he’d somehow forced her into believing it.

Denim soft from years of wear and washing, taut over the tell-tale ridge her questing hand is making of his flesh. Touch him, tease him, anything she wants. Pretend that they’re both still young and that the summer will go on forever. See him for exactly what he is and love him regardless, a debt of life and love repaid in every possessive moment together, in every sharp-clawed defence he never asks for and really doesn’t need. She kisses him again, hungry for the addictive taste of him; splays her fingers across the front of his jeans, moulding her hand to the shape of him – a perfect fit. Animal heat radiating through the fabric, male and potent and exciting.

His lips move against hers, a murmur of breath that she quickly steals away, banishing any words before they can form. For now, yes, she is young again; young and immoderate, greedy for everything such limitless freedom can possibly grant. There’s nothing lying beyond the blazing sun or the surprised not-hazel eyes that she can’t have. Nothing she can’t see, hear, feel, taste, touch. Nothing that can’t be taken, challenged, loved, or completely exposed. She wants – _needs_ – to give voice to covetous hymns of lust, gloriously loud in the big high-ceilinged room with its inquisitive windows and newly sleek lines, her fears and inhibitions cast aside as she both comes and _be_ comes.

He seems to read it in her fingertips. When he pushes against her she squeezes, just hard enough to make his breath hiss out between clenched teeth. Wisdom doesn’t negate folly, and for a moment she thinks he is magnificent. Maybe he is, in his own way. Maybe they _both_ are, given all the things they’ve survived, and maybe the promising autumn years ahead are their joint reward for the cluster of hard, painful years that threatened to take everything from each of them. Autumn colour, autumn passion – both are theirs, and both are breath-taking. Spring and summer are green and strong, full of life, but she knows that autumn’s vivid, too, and that its sun can blaze just as bright, warming the last days before the cold bite of winter.

She welcomes the determined way he sets the bottle aside and reaches for her, his strength so much greater than hers as he drops them both down onto the marooned bed, her body pulled over his right there in the midst of the debris, the dust sheets, and the paint fumes. Love and lust and laughter, fierce old wounds now healed into gentler scars that can both tell stories and teach lessons. She kisses his throat where a single brilliant stripe of sunlight falls across it, tastes the salt from the honest sweat that’s dried there and relishes it for the truths it tells. No idle daydream, no night-time fantasy wrapped in ghostly ribbons of moonlight. Just him, real and alive and _hers_.

Impulsive, impetuous. No need for preparation, or forethought, or caution. All the risks there to take if they want them. He doesn’t waste any time, and for once she’s glad. Buttons, zips, elastic – they all submit to his spontaneous enthusiasm with no help from her. Reckless, greedy teenagers again, both of them; hell-bent on chasing the familiar rush of endorphins that has somehow come to characterise their very own Indian summer. She grasps him with a greediness formerly forgotten, alternates quick strokes with a heavy friction that makes him growl and thrust in rhythmic counterpoint. Her victory, her triumph. Each deliberate squeeze generates an answering throb of heat and desire in his flesh that’s perfectly paralleled in hers. Perfect moment, perfect desire.

She’s in a heady, exciting place a long, long way away from any doubts and insecurities and she straddles him without anxiety or self-consciousness, exultant and determined to take what she wants, have what she wants. No teasing from either of them now, just the joyous and primitive selfish-selfless need to fuck and fumble in the brilliant stripes and rectangles of sunlight that fall across the big covered-up bed that’s only ever been theirs. Sighs that become low moans, fingers that wind together tight and hot as they meet and merge, a shifting array of shared sensations, blurring through some nerves, searing through others.

_Age is irrelevant…_

He’s right. The number of birthdays counted, the steady march of years that have passed, they don’t mean a thing to her. To either of them. He is part of her now, hot and hard inside her, his movements and hers perfectly synchronised towards one aim, one tantalising reward. A scrawny London pigeon flies past the window, momentarily casting a moving shadow across them both, a flicker of external movement that means nothing to them. The outside world has vanished. There’s only heat and humidity, sweat and sensation. Her light summer blouse, every last button unfastened, is stuck to her back, every bit as damp as the paint-flecked grey tee-shirt discarded somewhere on the floor.

Base and beautiful, the reckless carnality of it. More than love, more than lust, it’s something that’s just them, and the culmination of everything there ever was between them, good and bad.

She sweeps into a rising spiral of pleasure and desperation, one she knows well. The wild-eyed moments of almost, of nearly. A few more hard thrusts from beneath her, and she’s there, riding out that bittersweet tempest that’s joy, completion, satisfaction and raw muscular contraction. Familiar, wonderful. Wanton. In no way tranquil or comforting. She doesn’t know he’s with her until his grip on her fingers becomes a death-lock, until the guttural grunt of release becomes a full-bodied bellow, a rough shout of her name that fills the unfinished room.

Done. Quick and hard. Finished now.

She lies across him, still panting, well-aware of the way his broad chest heaves below her as he, too, struggles with the unwelcome aftermath of such sudden, unanticipated exertion. They are not young. It’s a conceit to even dare to imagine – much less pretend – that they are. But…

But it doesn’t matter.

It’s an effort to prop herself up enough to be able to look down at him. The warrior’s stripe across his cheekbone is flaking, apricot paint cracking over every deeply-etched line that’s been part of his smile for years.

His extraordinary, charismatic, wonderful smile.

She kisses him and tells him she loves him, not because she wants to hear it in return, but because it’s true. Maybe it’s been true for years. It doesn’t matter. It’s always been them, whatever their circumstances have been. Just Grace and Boyd, just Boyd and Grace. Always has been, and now… well, now as they face retirement and the autumn of their lives together, she honestly believes it always will be.

\- the end -

 


End file.
